Switchbacks

I saw my mother under sedation
in the Psych Ward, after she collapsed
at the funeral. She foresaw the bridge
disaster, but no one believed her,
not even father. Her “visions” made him
uneasy. He could not square them
with the fundamentalism he carted
all the way from Medicine Hat, husks
of a not-quite-former self. These
things I see, they’re not contagious,
she told him. Little warnings is all.
Maybe a day to take the bus,
avoid stepladders. She was cutting
avocados the day before it
happened, her face in shadow,
the skinned halves sliced thinly
lengthwise, then pressed to lie pale
and overlapping on the plate, neat
as playing cards. A decade later
I’d see terraced hillsides in Vietnam
that looked like that, rice growing
on man-made ledges. Round pit
of the avocado an unemployed moon
beside the dish rack. Cigarettes
verboten in the house, though wood
smoke from the cast-iron stove
probably caused as much damage
to our lungs. I’d wake up bilious
in the middle of the night, light-
headed from all the zapped brain
cells. Mother’s disguise puzzled me
at first, oxygen mask, I.V. tubes.
Her eyelids would flicker and she’d
utter nonsense syllables. Tongues,
my father might have suggested,
if he’d survived; she’s speaking
in tongues. Out of all the gibberish,
“switchbacks” was the only word
I recognized. Glossalalia? Not quite.
Directions, more like, how to think,
to move forward without father,
without Doubting Thomas, a straight line
being out of the question. And that,
more or less, is what we did.